Sex, Violence, and Rats with Monocles: Grandville Mon Amour

Follow Dark Horse Comics:

Sex, Violence, and Rats with Monocles: Grandville Mon Amour

12/16/2010 2:14pm

Before you pick up a copy of Grandville Mon Amour by legendary comics scribe Bryan Talbot, check out this great blog post by Dark Horse editor Chris Warner. You'll be glad you did!

Years ago, my father was in England taking a sabbatical from teaching college English. This was right after the time Dark Horse launched, and he happened to run across a London comics shop that had Dark Horse Presents #1 (featuring my Black Cross story) on display. My dad took pictures and went inside to ask the proprietors what Brit comics his comics-creator son back in the States might find interesting. Long story short, one of the books he brought back was the first issue of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright by Bryan Talbot.

I remember reading the book and thinking "What the hell . . . ?" I'd really never seen or read anything like Arkwright before, a series with so much depth, so much ambition, so much range, so damn many ideas. There was more happening on most pages, overtly and covertly, than in most entire comics of the day. Powerful, crazy, brilliant stuff.

As luck would have it, Mike Richardson at Dark Horse took a shine to Arkwright, and Dark Horse became its U.S. publisher, along with the sequel, Heart of Empire: The Legacy of Luther Arkwright, and Bryan's acclaimed The Tale of One Bad Rat. Sometime later, I came back onto staff, and I became the U.S. editor for another work of monumental scope and vision, Alice in Sunderland. Bryan seemed to have the market cornered on ultra-challenging works of graphic-fiction. The limited intellect of Bryan's college-dropout U.S. editor was sorely taxed, the rusty gears of my mind squealing and groaning under the weight of Bryan's heavy-duty narratives. I nearly broke Wikipedia.

And then one day, along came Grandville, Bryan's anthropomorphic, steampunk, detective graphic novel. Still amazingly complex, rife with allegory and political subtext, but a straightforward kickass comic in the best sense of the word. A "ripping yarn," if you will, with wall-to-wall action, sex, and mystery. The subtext, of course, still sails right over my low brow, but when Detective Inspector LeBrock is beating the tar out of a scrum of anthropomorphic terrorists, I'm there, man! Grandville was simply one of the most fun, rich graphic novels in recent years. Huzzah!

Now, the second movement of Bryan's steampunk symphony, Grandville Mon Amour, is in release, this time featuring a suspended Inspector LeBrock pursuing his arch-enemy, the murderous Mad Dog Mastock, through the streets of Paris—AKA Granville—in hopes of bringing him down along with the monstrous secret he holds.

Sex, violence, rats with monocles, Grandville Mon Amour covers all the bases in style. And I get to give Wikipedia a bit of a rest.

—Chris Warner, senior editor

Grandville and Grandville Mon Amour are in stores now!

Dark Horse Comics

Sex, Violence, and Rats with Monocles: Grandville Mon Amour

Tags

Recent Posts

Archive

Services

Sites

Company

Contact & News

Dark Horse Comics

Sex, Violence, and Rats with Monocles: Grandville Mon Amour

Tags

Subscribe

Recent Posts

Archive

Services

Sites

Company

Contact & News